A month-end inbox of partner spreadsheets
Most programmes don't decide to run on spreadsheets. They grow into it: a forms tool for collection, a sheet for activities, another for the logframe, and an inbox where partner reports arrive in whatever shape each partner prefers.
It works until someone asks where a number came from. Here are five signs you've reached that point.
1. Reporting week is the busiest week of the month
If the days before a report are spent merging, checking and re-typing, the work of reporting has become the work of reconciling. The data existed all along; it just wasn't connected.
2. Nobody can trace a figure back to the activity
When a donor asks how you reached 1,240 sessions, the honest answer shouldn't be "a formula someone wrote last year".
A figure you can't trace is a figure you can't defend.
3. Partners report in their own formats
Each partner's template is reasonable on its own. Together they mean someone on your team rebuilds the same table every month.
4. Personal data travels as attachments
Beneficiary lists in e-mail and on laptops are a data protection risk, and usually unnecessary: most reporting needs counts, not names.
5. One person holds the system together
If reporting stops when one information officer is on leave, the system is that person, not the tools.
What to do about it
- Record each activity once, where it happens, and let indicators count from that record.
- Agree with partners on what they report, not how they format it.
- Share counts, not lists, wherever a count will do.
Whether you use Tessera or not, those three changes take most of the reconciliation out of reporting week.